


Songs in the Key of Rao

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl
Genre: F/F, Kryptonian Lena AU, Polyamory, Spiritual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:18:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10521096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lena was betrothed to Kara on Krypton, a fact that she has been trying to deny, along with a large part of the faith that made up her identity.  Bonus are some Kryptonian hymns I wrote at four in the morning,.





	

_ It’s for your own safety, _ her mother had said, bundling her into the pod that would be her home for the duration of her trip, however long it took.  She remembered her eyes, her mother’s eyes, large like hers and blue-green like the seas of this Earth that would become her home.

It didn’t feel safe.  But she knew.  Lena was smart enough, good enough at science, to understand what she was being told.  Krypton was at the edge of death.  But on Earth? There would be others there.  Other Kryptonians, like her.  She would have at least a few souls who prayed to Rao, who knew the songs, who remembered the epic poems of Kel-Lo and Rana, who remembered the skylines of Krypton’s cities.

No, it didn’t feel safe, but she did as she was told.  And she found Earth.  She found its pale yellow light disconcerting, but the gifts it gave her!  She was never told she was brilliant on Krypton, except by her mother, but on Earth, she was a genius.  And she was powerful.

It would be so many years before she would find others like her.  At least she chanced into the care of Lionel Luthor.  He taught her to be cautious, to hide her abilities, to hide the godlike strength that the yellow sun gave her.  He taught her to shed her accent.  He encouraged her to attend church with them, though he promised he didn’t really worship the nailed God of the Christians.  It was only for the sake of community, appearances.  

Appearances.  She understood that.  Kryptonians were very much concerned with that as well.

It hurt when he discouraged her prayer practice.  It didn’t bother him, he promised, but his wife was uncomfortable with an alien in the home.  It didn’t help to remind her.  It didn’t help to do things to seem more alien.   _ It’s for your own safety, _ he assured her.  

But sometimes she couldn’t help it.  When she was building something with Lex out of clear plastic blocks, or doing the simple chores to which she had been assigned, she would sometimes sing quietly under her breath in Kryptonian, the Song in Search of Guidance, it’s haunting microtonal melody whispering over her pursed lips:

_ I am lost among the cities of the world  
_ _ I am wandering among its plains  
_ _ I am fording its streams that seem to never   
_ _ Empty into a sea.  
_ __ But always your light colors my path.

_ Oh, Rao, do not turn your face from me  
_ _ Your child is cold and does not know the way home  
_ _ Your child sifts for iron among ash  
_ _ For life among death  
_ _ Your child seeks your touch  
_ __ To break through the black metal clouds

_ Oh, Rao, do not turn your face from me  
_ _ Your child’s journey has been long  
_ _ And you are the red star by which I navigate.  
_ _ Do not turn your face from me  
_ _ As my boots sink into soil that even you could not bless.  
_ _ Embrace me, clutch this child to your chest again  
_ _ And teach me once more to read the signs  
_ __ That will guide me back to where I belong.

Lillian complained about even this, until Lena only hummed quietly, reciting the words in her head, never forgetting them.

  
  


**************

  
  


Meeting Kara felt like a wall around her heart crumbling that she had not even realized was there.  She told herself that she could not possibly be in love with her, not the way humans felt it, but she had known it was possible for her people.  Those impulses –to love with passion, to desire a joining of soul and flesh– those impulses had been mostly bred out by the time Lena was born, but she knew they existed as a recessive trait in some lines.  The way her heart stirred the first time she took Kara’s hand told Lena that her line was very likely one of them.  She had a memory, of when they were both children, that they had been promised to each other.  She was sure of it.  Kara Zor-El was the one.

But she belonged to the human, Cat Grant.  And this was Earth, and Krypton was gone, and she suspected that all its promises had gone along with it.  So Lena had abandoned hope.  She only clung to the joy of Kara’s friendship, the warmth of the home that she shared with Cat, who promised her that it would always be open to her.  She took delight in their presence, Kara’s gentleness, and Cat’s wit.  But she didn’t reveal her feelings, her dashed hopes to reclaim the lost bond, the lost promise of a Kryptonian mate.  It was, she told herself, for her own safety.

Nevertheless, she found herself, now an adult, now free, and now at last in the presence of another like her, as her mother had promised.  And for once, she found herself humming under her breath another of the hymnals than the one she’d spent so long with:

_ Oh, we have been granted abundance by you  
_ _ Oh, Rao, you have given us all that we need and more!  
_ _ We have been given the world itself,  
_ _ And the sky, and your light,  
_ _ And the genius to perfect ourselves  
_ __ To become ever closer to the perfect image of you.

_ Thank you, Rao!  You have given us so much! _ _   
_ _ You have given us the beauty of this world,  
_ _ It’s sparkling minerals and dark seas and  
_ __ Its beasts and Rao, you have given us one another.

_ Rejoice!  We rejoice in the beauty of your creation  
_ _ As we strive to perfect it.  
_ _ We rejoice in the love that you have taught us,  
_ _ The bonds of family and blood and the  
_ _ Beauty of these strands of genetic code that  
_ _ Bind us as filaments strong and delicate,  
_ __ Family, clan, community, world.

_ We rejoice! For the beauty of your light,  
_ _ For the aches and pains of existence,  
_ _ For its love,  
_ _ For teaching us selflessness, and force of will.  
_ _ And beauty, so much beauty,  
_ _ That we can only fall upon our knees in the  
_ __ Glittering soil and give thanks.

She was not alone, finally.  In the company of these two, she was welcomed.  Kara taught her bit by bit to use her powers.  Cat taught her to use her other powers; her wits, her abilities to assess and manipulate and motivate people.  They grew together in a way so gentle, so natural, that Lena barely felt what was happening.

One evening, they were sharing a dinner in Cat’s home and Lena was humming to herself the hymn that had been filling her spirit, and Kara set her fork down carefully, and looked up at her.  “What is that song?” she whispered, looking stricken.

“The Song of Gratitude,” Lena admitted with an embarrassed smile.  “I haven’t forgotten the songs of Rao’s faith.  I was just made to stop singing them for a long time.”

Kara pushed her plate aside and reached across the table.  She pushed Lena’s plate aside and gripped her by the forearms, eyes suddenly brimming with new feeling, new fire.  “You don’t have to do that anymore,” she declared, her voice quiet and fierce.

And they sang together, aloud, in Kryptonian, The Song of Gratitude, and it was the first time that both of them had reunited with that part of themselves in many long years.  

Lena had wound herself into their lives.  She chided herself for it, for she felt she had no rights here, but Cat dissuaded her from such thoughts.  Finally one night, she confessed to Cat:

“Cat, I thought that Kara was familiar to me when I first met her, and at first I believed that it was only because we were both from Krypton.  But it’s more than that.”

Cat gazed at her with interest.  “What is it, then?”

“We were betrothed to one another.  Promised to each other.”  Lena’s heart ached.  Keeping this secret no longer felt like it was for her safety.  It felt as though she was strangling a part of herself.  “We were designed for one another, Cat.”

Cat caressed her cheek.  “Well, it explains a lot, actually.”

Lena looked at her, startled.  “What do you mean?”

“Your brilliance.  Your sensitivity.  You could only have been made for someone as beautiful and good as Kara.”

Lena flushed.

“But why didn’t you tell her?”

Lena looked at Cat sadly.  She was so beautiful, so wise and strong, sharp and bright and complicated in ways that made even Lena’s heart squeeze in upon itself.  It was no mystery why Kara loved her.  “Because your love was perfect.  I had no right.”

Cat was gentle with her then, and loving.  “That isn’t how we’re going to handle this, Lena,” she assured her, and then embraced her, and kissed her forehead.

When Kara arrived later, Cat facilitated discussion between them of what the truth was.  Kara had felt it too, and strongly, but in her commitment to Cat, she had fought to ignore it.  She was relieved to know that there was an explanation.  Cat urged them together.

Lena and Kara both resisted.  “But I can’t give you up,” Kara protested.

“You don’t need to,” Cat answered with a soft, knowing smile.  “There’s more than one way to love, Kara.  And I think this home is big enough for all of them.”

And in that moment, Lena knew that her affection for Cat, which had been growing all this time as friendship, was ready and willing to be something more.  

  
  


********

  
  


Cat had little patience for languages, but Lena and Kara managed to teach her one of the hymns, The Song of Bonding, for though it was written for a different god, and a different world, it was somehow the best expression of what they had.  Kara and Lena may have been engineered for one another in the most literal of ways, but Cat was made to love them both, and they her, whether by fate or by the wills and whims of gods they couldn’t see and weren’t sure they entirely believed in.

_ We have been chosen for each other  
_ _ And the choice is perfect.  
_ _ We have been made for one another before  
_ _ We were even born into the world,   
_ __ Sculpted from the perfect design of Rao’s inspiration.

_ We have been chosen for each other  
_ _ Made to belong together in the image provided for us  
_ _ And slowly we turn until we see the edges  
_ __ Where we fit.

_ Oh take me by the arms and sing with me  
_ _ The songs of Rao’s love.  
_ _ We have been chosen for each other and now  
_ _ We knit ourselves together in common cause,  
_ _ In familial love,  
_ _ In the bonds of a plan more perfect  
_ __ Than any one mind could conceive.

_ We have been made to balance one another  
_ _ For our strengths to complement one another’s weakness  
_ _ Because Rao’s love is perfect  
_ __ And in his honor we strive to love another as perfectly as that.

_ Where I fall down, you will lift me up,  
_ _ And where you stumble, I will hold you steady.  
_ _ We were chosen for each other before our lives began,  
_ _ And our choice is perfect.   
_ _ We were made to fit together  
_ __ To cleave to another, leaving no space in between.


End file.
